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Canadian Music Week: It’s a long, long way to Toronto for this Attawapiskat rock band

Midnight Shine is a rock band from Attawapiskat hoping for a CMW breakthrough.

Midnight Shine rehearses for Canadian Music Week performances. (J.P. MOCZULSKI for the Toronto Star)

By Nick PatchEntertainment Reporter

Thu., May 5, 2016

Holed up in a chapellike rehearsal space in Scarborough preparing for an imminent spotlight at Canadian Music Week, Midnight Shine frontman Adrian Sutherland couldn’t help but look around with heavy lids and marvel at how far he had come — literally.

Sutherland, 39, lives in Attawapiskat — yes, the place you’ve read about — and days ago he was farther north still, 150 kilometres along the coast of Hudson Bay. It’s spring goose-hunt season, and Sutherland was harvesting with his family right up until these gigs beckoned.

Then, he hopped on a Ski-Doo, skidding across sea ice at 20 km/h for two days, flew from James Bay to Timmins, and finally drove nine hours to Toronto.

“Going from Attawapiskat to Toronto all in one day is like whoa — it’s overwhelming,” Sutherland said, with a drowsy head shake.

And now the work begins.

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Midnight Shine has showcases at Boots & Bourbon Thursday and the Horseshoe Saturday, where the band will play for the industry types who rarely make the 1,000-kilometre trek to northern Ontario in search of new talent.

“Bigwigs,” murmured drummer George Gillies.

So it’s a pivotal moment for Midnight Shine. They formed in 2011 when Sutherland hastily assembled a band to back him opening for Trooper in Timmins. He turned to Cree acquaintances: Fort Albany’s Gillies and classically trained bassist Stan Louttit, 52, and hard-shredding guitarist Zach Tomatuk, 31, both from Moose Factory.

They hit it off. Since, they’ve issued two melodic rock records — 2013’s Midnight Shine and 2014’s Northern Man — and caught the ear of Agency Group founder Ralph James, whose roster includes Nickelback, Walk Off the Earth and Hinder.

“I heard one track and thought, if these guys play live as well as they sound on the recording, I think we’re on to something here,” said James, who signed the band in February. “And they do.”

The fact that the group has chemistry at all is a minor miracle.

They’re separated by small, impossible distances. For instance, Moose Factory and Fort Albany are 130 kilometres apart, but even Google has no ideas for travelling between them.

Before the Toronto sojourn, they hadn’t seen each other since August. They work by swapping iMessages, brief recordings or chord charts. When they do link up, it’s expensive.

“Logistics are our biggest challenge,” said Sutherland.

“Money is tight,” agreed Gillies, 30.

If the separation is challenging, at least it’s familiar. Fort Albany is a fly-in community most of the year, with a winter road accessible only for a few months.

“I’m used to isolation,” said Gillies, clad in a Batman tee. “I went hunting, fishing with my parents, my brothers, my sister. It was a simple living. I liked it.”

“If you’re an artist,” continued Tomatuk, “you have all the time in the world to work on your craft. We didn’t have malls to hang out, or Disneyland distractions.”

Sutherland’s lyrics dance between truthfully portraying the hardship of northern life and celebrating that there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. On “Here I Am,” he sings: “It’s not their fault there are no roads leaving town/And the lies they all have told have left my dreams to drown.” By contrast, he trills on “Northern Man” about “going south where I don’t belong, so far away from the ones I love.”

He doesn’t diminish the ongoing crisis in Attawapiskat, but he wants to let some light into the picture.

“Attawapiskat is not the exception. There are communities like Attawapiskat across Canada’s north. Yeah, it’s tough living in those conditions. But it’s not all dark.

“Positive things are happening. There are people out on the land, with their families, hunting and harvesting. … People are trying to keep their spirits up and hope things get better.”

You know, the band hasn’t found the conditions in Toronto all that appealing, either. They stumbled upon a dead rat at the door of their Scarborough hotel, a “sketchy” establishment Tomatuk imagines is run by a “cockroach in a dress shirt.”

“As much as I love being here and being part of what’s going on this week, I really miss being home.

“I’m supposed to be harvesting right now and I didn’t do so well this year, because I had to cut it short to come out here. It’s tough. So when I get home, I have to go back out and get at least 10 more days’ worth.”

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